The present invention relates to the field of online computing and, more particularly, to incorporating representational authenticity into virtual world interactions.
Virtual world environments are a popular form of social networking applications that provide users with the ability to interact with others in a variety of settings. Users are allowed to create graphical virtual representations of themselves that they utilize to interact with the various elements of the virtual world environment, such as stores, games, and the virtual representations of other uses. Many virtual world environments provide users with a wide variety of graphical options to customize the appearance of their virtual representation, also referred to as an avatar.
However, the freedoms afforded users when creating avatars allows for misrepresentation. That is, the graphical appearance displayed by a user's avatar need not accurately reflect the user's actual appearance. The anonymity afforded by this dissociation between the user's virtual and actual appearance permits some users to conduct interactions within the virtual world under false pretenses. For example, cyber-predators have been known to create child-like avatars to interact with the avatars of real children.
Typical approaches to combat such misrepresentation have focused on user-entered information, such as birth date, when creating an account for the virtual world environment. However, this information is easily faked by the user. This is also true of approaches that require submission of a photograph to associate with the user account. Conventional virtual world environments are unable to validate and/or quantify the differences between a user's virtual and actual appearances.